eBooks, eReaders, and Libraries

"Because our school is in the midst of a 1:1 iPad implementation, it became critical to figure out how to deliver “library” books to students, and an e-library seemed an important way to reduce costs for students who might otherwise end up individually purchasing every reading title they need.

While our library has been experimenting with a variety of e-book offerings the last few years, finding a model that worked easily and well with the iPads was now important. So among other things, we have chosen to try Overdrive’s e-library service which allows you to build an e-library that students can “check out” books from.

Overdrive has many limitations, but it’s the major player in the e-book market for 1:1 devices. It’s fairly costly, only offers certain publishers, is an annual subscription (again, costly), and using it with Kindles or Nooks is a little complex. But with the iPad app, it’s a pretty easy implementation once the actual collection is built."

"So far, I find Follett Shelf a mixed bag of nuts. Like many e-book products out there for libraries, for the moment I’m going to have to live with it if I think our students will be using it. But it is extremely important that as customers, we give e-book companies constant feedback and become advocates for the improvements needed for our students and readers. We need to push vendors to provide the best designs and materials possible at prices that are affordable for schools. We need to speak to them about recognizing some special needs of schools, like the fact that for class sets, we often need 100 copies of a novel for 3 weeks, and it’s not really feasible to purchase those for one time uses like that if the e-book pricing isn’t affordable. As more schools move to 1:1, BYOT policies, or tablet roll-outs, solving these problems is going to be vital to our libraries so our role in this process is very important..." 

Over the weekend, Mike Cane and Charlie Stross looked at book publishing in the wake of the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) to sue several publishers and Apple for collusion over eBook pricing.
Cane argues that publishers should insist on a single eBook format (EPUB) and standardize the use of DRM around Adobe's product. Along the way, Cane also asks the largest publishers to forsake Amazon entirely.

Baker & Taylor, Inc., the world's largest distributor of digital and physical books, today announced an important new release of its Axis 360 digital media platform that allows visually-impaired ebook users to have full access and use of their library's digital collections.

Baker & Taylor worked closely with the National Federation of the Blind on the development of the service, which makes Axis 360 fully compatible with the leading assistive screen-reader technologies that blind people use to interact with computers and the World Wide Web. These include: JAWS (Job Access with Speech), Window-Eyes, NVDA (non-visual desktop access) and System Access To Go. Now, the entire digital library experience - from discovering new titles to checking them out, to reading them on the Blio ereader - is available to blind patrons and students, and to others with reading disabilities, in accordance with the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"The Douglas County Libraries has taken another interesting step in its program to secure outright ownership of ebooks, keeping intact the same rights that public libraries have always had with print works.
Jamie LaRue, the library’s director, has posted for comment on his blog two working documents that he has written in collaboration with Mary Minow of librarylaw.com that the library is using as the legal framework for its ebook program."

Barnes and Noble is teaming up with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to bring e-readers into the K12 school system.